Booksteve Takes a Look At The ‘Superman I-IV 5-Film 4K Blu-ray Collection’

Okay, let’s just get this out of the way right up front. Was there ever a human being who visually personified a classic comic book hero as well as the late Christopher Reeve as Superman? Well…okay, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, but then that goes without saying. We’re not talking about her today. Anyway…!

I remember the first ads for the Superman movie touting Mario Puzo’s screenplay in the trades as early as 1975. For long months afterwards, the gossip columns told us that the producers were looking at Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, or even, later, Sylvester Stallone, of all people, for the lead role. All of those big-name stars, of course, would have been terribly miscast as the Man of Steel. Luckily, the reports were erroneous (or more likely plants, just for the publicity) and the producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind, were searching all along for a new face.

Two movies were being filmed simultaneously, as had been done previously with Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), also for the Salkinds. In this case, though, veteran director Richard Donner butted heads with his bosses and Richard Lester was contacted to finish the two films. In so doing, he altered what would have been the second picture considerably from Donner’s vision. It would be nearly three decades before Donner’s cut would see the light of day.

In spite of all the in-fighting, much of which spilled out into the public at the time, the resultant first two movies together—despite some issues—were almost universally acclaimed by fans as the best superhero movies ever. A shame they had to do two more, really.

Superman was my very first superhero. Even before I discovered comic books, I was planted firmly in front of our little black and white television every evening, riveted to The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. Reeves had died his controversial death just months after my 1959 birth, but his reruns continued well into my teenage years, thrilling me anew once we got our first color TV set in 1968! George had been a stalwart, smiling Superman, and a dashing, winking Clark Kent.

As the new movie approached in 1978, I knew he would be a tough act for anyone to follow.

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE

I was at our local theater for the very first showing of Superman: The Movie and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest! But time can change perceptions. Let’s see how it holds up today, 45 years later.

Most of you reading this have probably seen the picture, perhaps multiple times, but just in case… Spoiler Alert.

We open with a cute little black and white, non-widescreen, segment with a young boy we never fully see reading a non-existent issue of Action Comics. As he reads the comic book captions, the camera zooms in on a panel of The Daily Planet building, the great metropolitan newspaper. As the child’s voice echoes off, the image becomes real, a lovely, vintage-1930s shot of the Planet globe. From there, the camera pans up, past a stark image of the moon and out into space where we suddenly spot…color! A lovely light blue headed toward the viewer in a kind of ersatz 3-D effect that expands us into widescreen and begins one of the most incredible opening title sequences ever made, with stars and interstellar events passing the viewer by, all to John Williams’ still stirring theme music!

Mario Puzo gets story credit, and is listed as one of the various screenwriters, alongside David Newman, Leslie Newman, and Robert Benton. Tom Mankiewicz is named as a “creative consultant.” As I understand it, even though Puzo got the big bucks in the wake of his Godfather success, it was felt his screenplay as written was unfilmable. David Newman and Robert Benton were familiar with the main characters as they had written the book for the 1960s Broadway play, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s…Superman. Of course, that play was considered a flop. Leslie Newman was David’s wife, a newcomer to screenwriting. Mankiewicz, on the other hand, had written a number of less than stellar movies such as Mother, Jugs, and Speed, and The Cassandra Crossing, but was quite successful as a so-called script doctor, brought into a project to “fix” scripts, a task he had performed to great acclaim with films such as Diamonds Are Forever and The Deep. Director Richard Donner reportedly brought him in on the Superman project to work his magic on its overinflated screenplay.

As the opening finishes up with Donner’s directing credit, and Williams puts down his baton, the camera continues straight into space until we come to a blazing red sun, and an icy blue planet beyond—Krypton! Rather than the futuristic architecture seen in the comics for decades, Krypton is here reimagined as a stark planet where almost everything, from buildings to spaceships, is crystalline. We finally go inside a massive dome where we see the giant projected faces of Kryptonian elders (all a bunch of familiar British actors) and hear the echoing voice of Jor-El for the first time.

Signing Marlon Brando was a great coup for the Salkinds. It cost them several small fortunes to do so but it was his attachment to the project, as well as later that of Gene Hackman, that enabled them to raise the rest of the money to make the film in the first place. In the 1950s, Brando had been declared by many the greatest actor of his generation. His stock fell in the ‘60s due to numerous poor choices of vehicles, only to be redeemed by The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris, making him by far the highest paid actor in the business at that time. Superman, in a way, reunited Brando with Godfather author Puzo.

In the opening scenes here, Marlon Brando demonstrates just exactly why he was considered such a great screen actor. His Jor-El, all dressed in black here, is commanding and somehow coldly passionate as he tries three Kryptonian criminals before the Council, their ultimate fate to be projected into the Phantom Zone, in the comics a mysterious other dimension where criminals are trapped in a ghost-like state. This is, of course, all foreshadowing for the second film as these particular prisoners are General Zod, Ursa, and Non (played by Terence Stamp, Sarah Douglas, and Jack O’Halloran).

One of the first questions viewers ask is, “Why is Jor-El wearing Superman’s S shield on Krypton?” A second is likely to be, “Why does he keep mispronouncing the name of his own planet?” Brando’s Jor-El pronounces it like “Criptin.” No answers are immediately forthcoming.

As the seditionists are convicted, Stamp chews some scenery as he threatens to make Jor-El and his heirs bow down before him someday, somehow. Rather than be projected into the Zone like in the comics, the giant dome opens up and what looks like a big plate of glass comes tumbling in from space, absorbs them so they’re now just one-dimensional, and then flies away. That’s the last we’ll see of them for a while.

Cut to Jor-El’s other big conspiracy theory—that the planet is about to explode, within 30 days if not sooner. As much as the council agreed with him as disembodied, holographic heads at the trial, they completely disagree here in person, with everyone all now wearing glowing silver clothing, each with a symbol on it like the S. They also warn him that if he tries to create a panic by informing the general populace, he will be considered an insurrectionist.

Back home, we meet Lara, with baby Kal-El. The plan to send their son to the planet Earth where he will have more powers than an earthman is already in motion. His father is excited at the prospects, his mother warier. As they place the baby in the crystal spacecraft, Jor-El makes a rather pretentious speech and then it’s launch time. And just IN time, too, as lightning and earthquakes begin to strike Krypton. We get a quick cut of the council, with one guy clearly thinking, “Oh my stars! You mean that nut was RIGHT??” The spaceship slowly leaves planetary orbit as the planet itself colorfully begins to do same. Then the explosion.

After that, we follow the ship’s journey to Earth, watching young Kal get an education from Jor-El’s pre-planted audio crystals. Before you know it, he’s a toddler and the inside of the crystal ship is all he’s known. But then, finally, the ship begins entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Suddenly, it’s like we’re in a whole ‘nother movie with Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter driving along a country road in an old truck like Ma and Pa Kettle. Of course, they’re Ma and Pa KENT, and they witness the flash from the crash landing of the rocket. Jonathan swerves and gets a flat tire but they’re at the site and they’re amazed.

They’re even more amazed when a naked toddler (slightly clothed in some versions) rises from the wreckage. Martha sounds a bit, “tetched,” actually, already thanking the lord for sending the child she’d been praying for, while Jonathan changes the tire. In more foreshadowing, Martha reminds him about his heart condition. When the jack slips, the Kents discover their new son is no ordinary boy when he literally catches and lifts the truck before it flattens anyone.

That scene ends and we now jump ahead about 12 years or so. The Kents have clearly kept and raised the baby from space, naming him Clark, after Martha’s maiden name. When we next see him, he’s now played by Jeff East, best known at that time for playing Huck Finn in two films a few years earlier. East’s hair is dyed and kind of looks it. Still, he looks like he himself might have made a good Superman. No one told him at the time, but in a move similar to the Star Wars James Earl Jones/Dave Prowse issue, Christopher Reeve redubbed East’s entire performance.

It isn’t a very long performance, really. We see Clark Kent as the school football team’s towel boy, knowing full well he could be the star quarterback if he really let loose. We do meet redheaded Lana Lang, young Clark’s crush in the comic books. We’ll see her again a couple of movies later. Out of sheer frustration, he kicks the football…about two or three miles from the look of it. He then goes for a run…at super speed, trying to outrun a train.

This is the scene that has the cameo appearances by the original movie Superman and Lois—Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill, here cast as the parents of young Lois Lane. That’s only in the longer edit shown later on TV and internationally, though. In the version released originally in US theaters, for some reason most of that brief sequence—including all of its dialogue and even any kind of a good look at Alyn—was edited out.

East ends up back home at the Kent farm, where he gets lectured by his Pa just before the aforementioned heart condition rears its ugly head and Glenn Ford’s part in the picture is over, just like that. One never knows. After a somber funeral scene, Clark seems to hear something calling to him and finds where his foster parents had hidden his ship in their barn. There’s a green crystal. The next morning, he tells his mother he has to leave. We aren’t sure why. Martha says she had been expecting the day, though. All of this is beautifully shot in a glowing wheat field with soaring music.

Then we’re once again onto something else. To say the beginning of this movie is episodic would be an understatement. We’re 40 minutes in and we’ve yet to see Superman. Now we appear to be in the Arctic, where Clark tosses the green crystal and it creates some kind of gigantic crystal palace out of the ice. A fortress, if you will…of solitude.

It’s clear that Clark has no idea what’s happening but he seems to instinctively know what to do to summon Jor-El’s holographic “ghost” to finally update him on his great powers and great responsibilities. Brando’s warmth shines through here as the dialogue tells us Clark is staying there for several YEARS just listening to all of this. When did Jor-El find time to literally record himself giving years of instruction of all knowledge? How did he himself KNOW all knowledge? We hear a lot of it, too, but we see only a montage of space effects, again. Does Clark ever leave during this time? What does he eat? Where does he get it? What do the people back home, including his mother, think has happened to him? How does he later explain disappearing for several years?

Ah, who cares? When we finally cut back, we get our very first glimpse of Superman, in uniform, some 47 minutes in, standing on the ice and then casually floating up and flying away.

Is it still East or is it Reeve? Can’t tell. Where he got the costume, I have no idea, either. Did Jor-El have sewing instructions embedded in that crystal, too? And instructions on how to make a sewing machine? One thing’s for sure. Pop had to have told his son about the S symbol, whatever it’s supposed to be, because he’s now wearing it, too.

From this point on, we’re once again in what feels like a completely different movie as we suddenly find ourselves plopped down in a teeming metropolis (get it?) outside the Daily Planet building…which is, of course, where we came in 40 years earlier, or 48 and a half minutes earlier as the case may be.

The next few minutes have a sitcom feel as we meet young redheaded, bow-tie wearing Jimmy Olsen, practicing his photography in the Planet’s main newsroom. Most of the reporters are like, “No pictures,” but Lois Lane smiles and poses as he interrupts her typing. Marc McClure and the perfectly cast Margot Kidder both immediately connect with the viewer and head off to see Jackie Cooper, playing editor Perry White. (Cooper started out his career playing the comics character, Skippy, in a 1930 Oscar-winning film of the same name and here almost 50 years he was playing another comics character. In both cases, it was good casting!) Wasting no time now, Perry tosses off the line, “Lois Lane, say hello to Clark Kent,” which Lois totally ignores. We catch our first glimpse of Clark, here, and of the highly publicized Reeve, too. With his dark suit and great big glasses, he seems extremely nervous but you quickly realize that’s the character, not the actor.

Lois and Clark get off to an awkward start but the viewer is quickly drawn to the mild-mannered Kent persona. As they leave the Planet offices at the end of the work day, with Clark anachronistically wearing a hat, there’s a pointless cameo by author and New York film critic Rex Reed as himself. This was only Reed’s second movie role after the mega-disaster that was Myra Breckinridge a decade earlier. After Myra, I don’t know how Rex could ever have been taken seriously again as a film critic. Maybe his appearance here was to ensure at least one positive review?

Up next is a short section that serves to show us both Lois’s fear no evil recklessness and the first real glimpse of Clark being super as an armed robber coaxes them into an alley only to end up running scared after accidentally firing his gun when Lois kicks him. Clark catches the bullet, feigns passing out, but then gives us a quick and ingratiating grin when Lois isn’t looking.

From sitcom to camp, we now meet Otis, looking like Woozy Winks as he makes his way through Metropolis to the secret underground headquarters of Lex Luthor. For all of director Donner’s supposed desire to remove the camp from the script, nearly all of the Luthor segments positively drip of leftover Batmania. Ned Beatty, a wonderful actor with a wide range, plays Otis as little more than a stooge, comic relief. He might as well be Andy Devine or Smiley Burnette. Funny at times, but overall, it’s a bit of an embarrassing performance, really.

The same can’t be said for Gene Hackman as Lex, though, as his grinning, scene-chewing, over-the-top performance is much fun, even though I would have loved to have seen him play it straight. We first meet him as he intentionally murders a police detective following Otis! And why does Luthor, one of the most famous bald characters of them all, have hair? Did Hackman refuse to shave his head? There’s a scene toward the end that reveals he’s been wearing wigs all along, but why? Valerie Perrine’s comically-named Eve Teschmacher offers little more than busty window-dressing for most of the picture as Luthor’s…what? Assistant? Girlfriend? Moll? Sex slave?

Anyway, after establishing our villain, it’s time to really, at long last, meet our hero. Bumbling Clark is beside himself as everyone, Lois included, ignores him after a late night at work. She’s rushing around to be off via helicopter to greet the arrival of the President on Air Force One. That was the plan, at least. The helicopter gets snagged in a cable and is about to fall off the Planet roof. As I understand it, this was the first major scene that was shot and it is a truly harrowing one. Having finally found an elevator going down, Clark walks out into the panic in the streets, at first completely oblivious to the fate his crush is about to endure.

The heroic music starts to build as Clark hurriedly looks for a place to change and ultimately does so in a revolving door. A man on the street starts to comment on his “bad outfit” when he simply says “’Scuse me,” and flies straight up into the air.

The tagline for this movie was “You will believe a man can fly.” And brother, with this scene, the audience really did! A couple scenes later on are a bit less convincing, and the later films unfortunately offer diminishing returns, but this scene sells it 100%! In his public debut, Superman not only grabs Lois when she falls, but on his way back up to the roof, he nonchalantly grabs the falling helicopter as well, all to Williams’ stirring score! I still find myself tearing up at Superman’s grin and his telling Lois he’s “A friend” just before he flies away. A friend…like in Clark Kent.

Apparently, Supes felt the rush for the first time of using his powers for good, as he now flies off into the night to keep doing just exactly that in a lighthearted montage. “On patrol,” if you will. This was and is my favorite part of the movie and, to my mind, sums up what differentiates Superman from all the other movie superheroes. It’s what latter-day Superman showrunners never seem to grasp and that’s that Superman helps people and does good because it’s the right thing to do. Period. There’s no survivor’s guilt behind it, no sense of power or being greater than everyone else. He’s just a good person, with the ability to help. If we all learned anything from comics, it should have been that simple lesson.

As satisfying as this sequence is, we see our hero demonstrating some powers that make no sense—not the last time we’ll see that in this series. For instance, he is NOT Spider-Man. How is he standing on the side of a building looking down? And then he flies downward and stands the opposite direction, looking up. He can fly, he can leap tall buildings at a single bound, sure. But just generally defying gravity? But, as I said, a very satisfying bit anyway.

Enough can’t be said about Reeve’s facial expressions and even his line delivery. He embodies the true essence of the Superman I always envisioned in my head and based on the respect his performance immediately merited, I’d say many others felt the same way.

At the conclusion of his evening, Superman hits the big time when he rescues the damaged Air Force One and saves the President of the United States (although we don’t actually see the President until the second movie). In several versions of Superman’s story, his first big rescue is an airplane. In a later comics revamp, it becomes a space shuttle.

After another bit of silliness in Luthor’s lair where he speculates about Supes, we’re back at the Planet, where perpetual schoolboy Clark has slipped Lois a note about meeting her that evening at her place. He signed it, “A Friend.”

Superman shows up a few minutes late and Lois is a bit tipsy by the time he arrives but it’s another fun scene which serves to give both Lois and the viewer more info about Superman. It’s highlighted by where Superman takes Lois flying and she recites the “Can You Read My Mind?” lyrics in her head to Williams’ lovely music. They also fly around Metropolis where they pass the Twin Towers and the Statue of Liberty. Uh…The entire sequence goes on too long and slows down the film a tad. It could easily have been cut entirely and not missed but it does serve to underscore the fact that these two have already genuinely fallen for each other.

After the scene concludes, Clark shows up for their date (Huh? What date?) and his intent is clearly to reveal his true identity to her. Here, thanks to Reeve, we see once and for all how not just the glasses but the way he carries himself really can make Superman and Clark look very much like two different people.

Back to Lex, where he somehow extrapolates from Lois’s published interview the exact location of Krypton, the fact that a meteor found in Ethiopia came from there, and that its radiation can kill Superman, all the while wearing a different, rather silly-looking hairpiece with a grey streak.

It’s not even the same hairpiece he has in the next shot, after an abrupt cut to a missile convoy.  Now it’s curly and almost blond. In a cringeworthy scene meant to be funny, Larry Hagman, in a truly pointless cameo as the Major heading up the military escort, seemingly molests Miss Teschmacher as she pretends to have been wounded in an accident. It’s all a complicated ruse, of course, to allow Otis time to reset the target for the missile being transported. Being Otis, he, of course, fouls that up.

Apparently, they have a truck waiting with a wide load house on it and they use that to block the next missile convoy, this time with Miss Teschmacher sneaking aboard to do the reset.

What’s Lex up to? We don’t have a clue yet except that he plans to kill Superman. Turns out Lois and Jimmy (on his first assignment, according to Perry) are out west investigating a story about an anonymous man paying small fortunes for worthless property and that, as episodic as this movie is, is clearly going to turn out to be Luthor. Where he got all that money, who knows? Perry tells Clark about two people killed in the previous night’s theft of a piece of meteorite in Addis Ababa. Clearly this, too, was Lex, but when did he fit that in? And again, casual murder just doesn’t seem his style.

The Chief’s lecture to Kent is interrupted when a piercing high frequency message only Clark can hear—well, along with every dog in town—comes through from Lex Luthor. He warns Superman of a threat to half the city and Clark surreptitiously jumps out a high window, “magically” blinking into his super suit on the way down and then flying up and into the distance.

Some lovely, well-done flying through the city sequences precede the hero’s discovery of the underground lair. He spins around and around and somehow drills through the ground and down he goes.

As the two finally meet, the leisure-suited Lex at last explains that his plan is to use the two missiles he’s reprogrammed to sink California, leaving the heretofore worthless desert land he’s been buying as beachfront property. Silly? Sure. But that’s okay as it’s really just an excuse for Superman to be Superman which is what this picture is all about. Hackman continues to have much fun in this scene with his intentional overacting, even though it also continues to seem out of place to this viewer.

While all of this is going on, the two armed missiles are fired. We aren’t told where they were meant to be going, or how the one Otis fouled up was programmed to where Lex wanted it, but again, these details are unimportant. The important thing here is that we know Superman will have to go after the missiles. There’s a reason the comic in which the character debuted was called “ACTION” Comics!

But first, we have to see the debut of kryptonite as he is tricked into opening the lead case where Luthor had hidden the glowing green meteorite section, now made into a medallion he puts around the weakened Superman’s neck as he tosses him into a pool. When Miss Teschmacher discovers that the second missile is about to destroy Hackensack, New Jersey, where her mother lives, she reluctantly rescues Superman, on his agreement to save her mother first. The two of them have a moment—a seemingly inappropriate one, considering—and then it’s on!

What happens next is fast and confusing as Superman seems to go against his word and flies across the deserts as if going after that missile first. He spends a lot of time flying underground attempting to shore up the fault line, then comes up to save a school bus full of kids from falling off the collapsing Golden Gate Bridge and a passenger train where the tracks collapsed.

When the dam Jimmy is photographing starts to collapse, he is rescued by Superman, too, but Lois isn’t so lucky as her car stalls and she’s caught in the earthquake and killed. While this is happening, the Man of Steel is using his powers to knock down a mountain and block the raging waters from the collapsed dam in a scene with some surprisingly unconvincing miniatures.

Upon discovering Lois, in a now notorious scene, our enraged hero screams and flies faster and faster around the globe over and over and over, successfully managing to turn back time to the point where Lois was still alive. He hears both of his fathers in his head, like an angel and a devil, as he does this. Of course, the question is also begged, if he could fly this crazy fast, why couldn’t he have easily stopped both missiles before the earthquake had even started?

Presumably he does this time stop the missile, although we never see it. Nor do we see anything else that was reversed. He arrives at Lois’s car at the point where it stalled and she starts bawling him out. “That’s the problem with Men of Steel,” she tells him. “There’s never one around when you want one.” He breathes a nervous sigh of relief. He’s happy that his spur of the moment plan to turn back time worked, but he’s ecstatic that Lois is still alive. Jimmy shows up just as the pair are about to exchange a first kiss. Superman excuses himself and flies off, leaving them alone in a desert, with her car out of gas. Umm…

Where does he have to go? To capture Luthor, of course, and yet we don’t get to see that. It’s nighttime back in Metropolis when he lands on the prison grounds with Otis and Luthor, informing the warden that they need to be kept safe there until they can get a fair trial. Where’s Miss T? Who knows? (Well, the longer version tells us.) This is the one and only time where Luthor rips off his wig, revealing his famously bald pate.

Superman flies up into the night and we get the now-iconic flying, grinning shot, that typifies what a superhero should be. The credits play out with reprises of John Williams’s perfect music, as played by the London Symphony Orchestra so we all sat through them back then and I sat through them now.

So, yeah, looking at it now with jaded eyes, 1978’s Superman-The Movie is a bit of a mess, really—long, episodic, confusing, campy, a bit squicky, and with some major plot holes throughout.

So why do I STILL say it’s one of the best superhero movies of all time?

Christopher Reeve, pure and simple.

For all the issues here that can be laid directly at the feet of director Richard Donner, he “got” Superman, and so did Reeve. More so than Kirk Alyn or George Reeves, and certainly more so than Brandon Routh, or Henry Cavill, or any of the TV Superman actors of late, Donner and Chris knew exactly what made Superman Superman, and they gave it to us here. The hair, the way he carried himself, the million dollar grin, the determination, the friendliness, the downright joy he took in being able to fly. It’s all there in a way it never quite was again. In some pictures that wouldn’t be enough to overlook all the flaws, but here I say it is.

Superman-The Movie was and is great, not because of its storyline or its big stars but because of Superman. It’s as simple as that. If they had stopped here, that would have been enough. Remember, though, the first sequel was being filmed simultaneously. And controversially, as it would turn out. And we ended up with two different versions! We’ll take a look at that next.

Booksteve recommends. Duh.

SUPERMAN II
SUPERMAN II: THE DONNER CUT

In 2006, as unlikely as it seemed, director Richard Donner’s original cut of Superman II—or the closest approximation that could be made since some scenes were never shot—was released on DVD. How does it compare to the Richard Lester-completed version that was released in 1980? And how do both versions hold up now, decades later? Let’s take a look at both, shall we?

I suppose I should point out that there are about a zillion spoilers ahead so if you haven’t seen either version of Superman II, I’d head back toward Gotham City now. Also, I shall attempt to avoid delving into the behind-the-scenes creative differences that led to there being two distinct versions credited to two very different directors in the first place.

The first thing one notices is that the Donner cut opens with a dedication to Christopher Reeve, who had died two years earlier, nearly 11 years after an injury left him almost completely paralyzed.

The opening scene is a partial reprise from the first film, with Marlon Brando as Jor-El at the conviction of General Zod, Ursa, and Non and their one-dimensional entrapment in the phantom plate glass window. This time, though, we stay with them as they float out into space, which has the unexpected consequence of sparing them when the planet Krypton explodes. We even see Kal-El’s crystal escape pod zip past them. This time, we hear Pop tell his son that Mom has sent along red, yellow, and blue blankets because “their protection will ensure your strength.” Okay, so that’s where the super suit came from. He still had to learn how to sew though. And why and how do they ensure his strength?

We get a different take on the naked baby scene as this time we see Ma and Pa Kent standing way off in the distance as toddler Kal exits his vehicle in the all-together. All the while, we’re seeing the Kryptonian criminals caught in the ship’s wake and drifting slowly toward Earth, too.

A big jump then takes us to Lex Luthor’s kryptonite trap from the previous picture, Miss Teschmacher’s odd kiss, and a quick edit of the missile-chasing scene. You’ll recall that the Man of Steel diverted the first missile into space. Well, now we find out that that particular move had repercussions as that’s what accidentally frees Zod and his pals after what, to them must have been about three decades trapped.

As they realize they have super powers around our yellow sun, the credits come up, similar to those in the first one but without the great theme. Hackman gets top billing, then Reeve, then Brando. Then the theme does begin again. Interesting to note that Robert Benton’s name is now missing from the writing credits. So far, feels a bit like a rerun with a couple brief new scenes.

The Lester cut also opens the same way, albeit oddly without Jor-El in the scene of the Kryptonian criminals being tried and found guilty. Instead, we see their capture and some sort of hooded or helmeted Kryptonian…what? A guard? Baliff?

We then see Lara only as the baby is launched toward earth in his crystal ship and the credits begin.

As before, there’s a reprise of Luthor’s earlier scheme although, this time, it is not the missile that frees the baddies. That will come later.

After the credits, the Donner cut zooms in on Earth, and particularly on a skyline with the World Trade Center so we know we’re back in New Y…I mean…Metropolis, USA. This must be set just after the first film as Perry White carries a copy of the Planet citing Superman’s victory over Luthor. It also headlines the fact that he drew a “harsh sentence” for his scheme. That was fast!

After barely mentioning it in the first film, Lois is shown drawing glasses on a photo of Superman in the paper, evidence that she suspects his true identity, a running theme in the comics for many years.

Perry assigns them to pretend to be a married couple on their honeymoon for a story at Niagara Falls. Clark is perplexed as Lois keeps dropping unsubtle hints and yet he keeps missing them.

So, Lois being Lois, she jumps out the skyscraper window, knowing Superman would never let her get hurt.

Clark super speeds down to the ground and unobtrusively uses his super breath and heat vision to slow her and provide a soft awning for her to land on, before she bounces into a fruit and vegetable cart.

Apparently, Lester felt there should be more action right up front as the released version shows Clark’s arrival as before, only this time Lois isn’t in the office. Seems Perry (Why does he have Bill Cosby’s picture on his wall?) sent her to Paris to report on terrorists who had seized the Eiffel Tower and were threatening to destroy the entire city with a hydrogen bomb. On hearing this, Clark naturally changes into his real work togs and flies off to the save the day. Seeing as how we know how fast he can fly after the ending of that first picture, he’s flying mighty slow here for some reason.

While he’s in transit, our favorite “girl reporter” gets herself in trouble (naturally) and nearly killed. Superman eventually arrives, saves the day, and tosses the nuclear device out into deep space…where it happens to free the three Phantom Zone prisoners when it explodes! The whole Paris scene is my favorite from either version and the explanation for the villains’ escape makes more sense in this version.

Lester then gives us a scene where Clark is hit by a car crossing the street. Unhurt, of course, he keeps walking to Lois while the driver wonders what just happened as he surveys the damage. Clark and Lois talk and it’s clear, much to his dismay, that he is tucked deeply into Ms. Lane’s “friend zone.”

After these separate Daily Planet interludes, both cuts give us Otis and the now-hairless Luthor still discussing how to get back at Superman, even though they’re in the prison laundry. They know he always flies North but why? More importantly, how could they know, as we’ve never seen him anywhere near his fortress after he initially left it. And if they did, why suspect that as anything worth caring about? Anyway, it seems Lex has somehow invented a box that can track alpha waves and will lead him to Superman’s secret. Lester wisely eliminates some “potty humor” at the end of the scene.

Both films continue the same after that as we learn that there’s been a joint US/Soviet Moon mission going on for 45 days. We see the space explorers on the surface of the moon suddenly freak out when the villains from Krypton make their appearance. The curious trio proceed to kill an astronaut and a cosmonaut, while the remaining earthman tries to get away in his ship.

With no indication of how she escaped her fate in the long edit of the previous film, Miss Teschmacher shows up next, in a hot air balloon, helping Lex escape in both versions amidst some painfully unfunny comic bits.  Otis is thankfully left behind and, rather than shoot down the balloon, the villainous pair flies off toward the North Pole following whatever the heck path Lex’s black box is showing them.

 

In the Donner cut, Brando’s Jor-El returns via the crystals and gives Lex all types of useful info, including about how the three evil insurrectionists could be freed by a nuclear explosion in space.

In Lester’s version, Brando (who demanded more millions to allow his already shot scenes to be used), is replaced in the crystals first by a random Kryptonian, followed by Susannah York’s Lara, imparting much of the same info. The scene ends with more potty humor.

We see Lois and Clark on their assignment at Niagara Falls next, and Superman shows up to save a boy who falls over a fence into the rapids. Lester has Lois, again suspicious of Clark, jump in to make him reveal himself. He once again manages to rescue her without changing to Superman, and even makes her think she’s rescued him instead! Back in their hotel room, though, he gets burned but not hurt, forcing him this time to go ahead and admit the truth. Saying they need to talk, he flies her to his arctic fortress to an instrumental reprise of “Can You Read My Mind?”

In what had obviously been a rehearsal scene (different glasses), Donner shows us instead Lois pulling a gun and shooting Clark! It turns out to be a blank, but he didn’t know that. He then reveals himself and they fly off to the Fortress.

The Kryptonians arrive on Earth speaking perfect English somehow, and already planning to take the place over. While in East Houston, Idaho, the three practice using their powers, including Zod’s apparent telekinesis (??).

While all this is going on, Superman and Lois are getting it on up North. In Lester’s version, Superman flies off to the islands to prepare them an exotic meal, after which Clark gives up his powers for the woman he loves against his late mother’s holographic wishes while Lois watches wearing a diaphanous gown she found lying around there somewhere. There’s a creepy montage as the red sun energy works, then Clark walks away from Superman’s image and the couple head off to an uncomfortable-looking bed.

The other movie shows them post-coital before he gives up his powers, this time over Dad’s holographic objections, while Lois looks even sexier wearing her lover’s blue, red, and yellow Super-shirt!

In both, we have to wonder how they got back from the North Pole. We see them driving a car through a snowy area in the one cut, and a non-snowy area in the other. With no powers and no coats, they walked far enough South to rent a car I guess.

They stop at a diner in both films, just in time for an uncredited cameo from Richard Donner walking in front of their car. Clark gets beat up by a trucker hitting on Lois, but then they get distracted by TV reports of Zod and Clark declares that even though he knows he can never restore his powers, he has to find a way to restore his powers.

Apparently, he leaves Lois the car to drive however many hundreds of miles are still to go back to Metropolis, and we see the now-powerless Clark hiking his way back to the Pole in arctic winds and temperatures, having no clue what he’s going to do when he gets there, assuming he gets there alive at all!

While all this is going on, the Kryptonians have for all intents and purposes conquered the Earth. They’re sitting in the Oval Office when Lex shows up and attempts to ingratiate himself with them in exchange for them giving him Australia.

When he informs them that the missing Superman is Jor-El’s son, they know they have to find him to complete their vengeance! Lex tells them he hangs around the Metropolis Daily Planet, so they go there.

Luckily, Clark finds a crystal that allows him to reverse the “permanent” red sun energy effects that took away his powers. Donner’s Jor-El tells him he anticipated this and seemingly gives his son his own life energies to reverse the process.

Soon after that, Superman soon standing in mid-air outside the Planet window. By this point even Luthor is leery of the other aliens and says, “Superman! Thank God!”

The long, loud, stunt-filled city fight scene that follows is no doubt the reason so many declare Superman II to be the best of the series. As near as I can tell, this sequence is the same in both cuts, and it is an exciting one. A memorable amusing character is a guy wearing a sandwich board stating the end of the world is near…and it seemed like it was!

That man, uncredited, is veteran 007 stuntman Jazzer Jeyes (also a Joker henchman in Keaton’s Batman). About five years after Superman II was released, I hired his daughter at my bookstore! I always remembered her telling me that was her father. Last week, as I watched the film, I sent her screen grabs on Facebook and she was thrilled to see them!

In the long run, though, a nearly-defeated Man of Steel retreats to his fortress to rethink his strategy. Luthor explains that he knows Supes’ address and off they go. In a WTF moment from the released film, Superman pulls off a cellophane-like replica of his emblem and wraps Non in it briefly. They all shoot rays from their fingers, and seemingly disappear and reappear at will in different locations. This could possibly be chalked up to super speed except for the fact that Superman then creates multiple lifelike copies of himself in different locations around the fortress.

In the end, knowing Lex will betray him, Superman uses him to trick the conquerors into getting their powers taken away while he remains protected. He then breaks Zod’s hand and Zod and Non fall into a bottomless abyss, apparently to their deaths now that they’re only human.

Lois makes sure Ursa goes down, too. Lois and Clark then fly back to Metropolis. No word on what happened to Lex.

That’s the way it all stays in Lester’s version, too, but Donner, instead, has our hero re-create the controversial ending from the previous film, flying around the globe over and over at super speed in order to reverse time so that all the damage was never really done, Lois never found out his double identity, and the three arch-criminals are still safely trapped forever in the Phantom Zone.

Lester, somewhat anticlimactically, shows us Clark and Lois at work the next day, with Ms. Lane depressed about the whole romantic mess. That’s when Clark uses another of his little- known powers, his super hypnotic kiss, to take away her memory of his being Superman (to the strains of “Can You Read My Mind,” yet again).

We then see Superman restoring the US flag to the White House and promising the President he will never let him down again, before flying off into space and leading into the closing credits with what I believe to be the same great Super-grin shot from the first movie.

And there you have it. Plenty of other small differences and Lester adds a downright goofy scene of the space baddies adding their own faces to Mt Rushmore in place of the Presidents who are there. Both versions end with a pointless but satisfying bit where Clark returns to the diner where he was beaten up, finds his bully there once again, and proceeds to beat him up this time. Makes even less sense in the Donner cut since the time reversal means it had never happened and it was just Clark being a bully!

But yeah, that’s Superman II, and Superman II-The Donner Cut.

Watching them like this, one right after the other, I would have to say that while both versions certainly have their strong points and, in some cases, their VERY weak points, overall I do prefer the Richard Lester edit, which frankly surprised me. Donner seemed in the first one to have a great understanding of what made Superman super, but that feels absent from his cut of Superman II. Reeve is still Reeve and at his best that makes all the difference, but the whole giving up his powers thing seems to come out of nowhere.

The city fight scene truly is magnificent mayhem and the flying scenes still have the power to awe the viewer. Kidder and Reeve still have great chemistry and Chris’s grin still makes up for a multitude of sins.

Margot Kidder began dating Richard Pryor after this as I recall. Maybe that accounts for what was about to happen next.

SUPERMAN III

Superman III is more about Richard Pryor than Superman. Pryor had succeeded in moving from arguably the most “dangerous” (and influential) stand-up comic in America to a fidgety, cowardly but endearing film persona akin to those of the great film comics like Bob Hope, Danny Kaye, and Don Knotts before him. Superman III just happened to be that guy’s latest vehicle, and it guest-starred Superman.

Spoilers begin…NOW.

We open with Pryor’s everyman, Gus, being denied additional unemployment money. He sees an ad to learn computer programming and we’re off.

The credits this time ride into the background as pretty eighties-haired blonde Lorelai Ambrosia (Pamela Stephenson), in a goofy outfit, wiggles her way like Carol Burnett’s Mrs. Wiggens through Metropolis, reminiscent of Otis’s wandering the streets in the first film. She hardly goes unnoticed, though, causing a chain reaction of accidents and mishaps that just keeps going and going. Clark Kent comes walking along and blows out the fire on a flaming penguin toy that’s walking along the road in her wake.

The team of David and Leslie Newman gets sole writing credit this time and Richard Lester is the sole director. The comic opening they presumably wrote is consistently amusing and ends with Clark getting the pie-throwing punchline. But does it really belong in a Superman movie?

More laughs quickly follow, albeit unintentional this time, as we see Pryor’s character in computer school working with now-ancient looking terminals running DOS. Turns out he’s a bit of a savant with computer tech which quickly gets him a data entry job with billionaire Ross Webster (former Man From U.N.C.L.E. Robert Vaughn).

While all this is happening, a cheerful Lois is sent off to the islands on some vague assignment, which seems really just a convenient way of getting Margot Kidder out of the picture. Perry agrees to let Clark and Jimmy go back to Smallville to cover Clark’s high school reunion.

The Planet apparently being too cheap to fly its reporters to Kansas (or wherever Smallville is supposed to be in this picture), our intrepid reporter and his photographer sidekick take the bus. Along the route they run into a giant chemical plant fire. Under pressure from Mr. White, Jimmy feels compelled to place himself in danger to get some pics. Meanwhile Superman conveniently arrives to help rescue trapped scientists and he discovers that there are scores of vials of a certain type of acid that could destroy half the planet if they reached a certain temperature. When the fire department runs out of water, the Man of Might saves the day by freezing the top layer of a nearby lake and literally flying it over the fire and dropping it. It may sound hokey but it’s the best action scene in the picture.

The Smallville High School Reunion goes as one might expect, with Clark being ignored by most and belittled by high school bully, Brad. A couple of interesting points—we see a pic of a young Chris Reeve rather than Jeff East as Smallville-era Clark and we learn that somewhere between the first movie and “now,” Clark’s mother had passed and he had gone back for her funeral. We also learn that Clark graduated in 1965, meaning there were 13 years he spent in his Fortress learning about everything from Jor-El’s pre-recorded “tapes” before he showed up at the Daily Planet.

The best part of Smallville though is we re-meet Lana Lang, now played by the always enjoyable Annette O’Toole. She’s divorced and has a young son, Ricky, and a dog, Buster, which is, of course, very different from the comics, but it’s clear Clark still has feelings for his high school crush.

Meanwhile, back in the Pryor movie, it doesn’t take Gus long to come up with a way to make a LOT of money by funneling billions of otherwise lost half cents into his payroll. Not being an idiot, himself, it doesn’t take long for Webster to figure out who’s taking his money.

Turns out the boss and Vera, his scheming sister (played by Annie Ross, formerly of the classic singing trio Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross), have need of a computer genius for their own nefarious purposes. They send him, also via bus, to Smallville, where the two movies first collide—literally—as Clark opens a car door, smashing passerby Pryor in the unmentionables.

After Clark and Lana share a comical picnic scene, Kent has to find a way to surreptitiously save Ricky after he falls while chasing Buster and knocks himself out.

That same evening, we see that bully Brad is the night watchman for Webster’s local headquarters, and Gus plies him with liquor to get access to the company computer to…do something. What we see next is a long series of supposedly comic events around the world caused by his tipsy typing before he finally takes control of a space satellite and uses it to create a typhoon and a tornado in Colombia, South America. Turns out controlling the weather was what Webster wanted all along, destroying the coffee crop so he can obtain a monopoly on coffee.

Back in Metropolis we find him ecstatic as he skis on the roof of his building and Vera suggests they try for a monopoly on oil next!

Gus arrives and puts a major damper on everything when he explains, actually demonstrates in a tablecloth cape, how Superman showed up and saved the day, as usual, drying out the coffee plantations and ending the tornado. Webster decides he has to do away with Superman, and Lorelai, revealing herself not to be quite the dumb blonde she seems, informs him about kryptonite.

After some unfunny and unlikely Pryor schtick that has him skiing off the building roof and somehow just walking away when he hits the street, Gus is back at a computer (begging the question of why did he have to go to Smallville before?), this time attempting to get the satellite to find and analyze kryptonite. When the analysis nets him some unknown ingredients, he randomly adds tar, from a pack of cigarettes at hand.

Back to the other movie, Clark, back at the Planet, gets a call from Lana, who says Ricky told his friends Superman was coming to his birthday party next week. Clark says he thinks he can arrange that. It turns into something much bigger when Superman is greeted with a brass band reception and a massive ceremony with the whole town present. He even gets the key to the city. Apparently, word of the event had spread in advance because Vera comes driving up in an army jeep, carrying Gus, who’s dressed and acting like General Patton. He takes over the stage, ranting about plastics. Yawn…Eventually, he thanks Superman for saving them from the chemical plant fire earlier in the picture and presents him with…the artificial green kryptonite Webster’s company created. It seems to have no effect.

Gus calls Webster to report the failure and his boss is NOT happy! Looks like the kryptonite is having a very different effect, though, as we find Supes at Lana’s being pretty self-serving as he starts to hit on her rather than go to rescue a truck he’s heard is hanging off a bridge. By the time he does arrive, he’s too late to do anything. After that, he flies around the world causing mischief such as straightening the Leaning Tower of Pisa and extinguishing the Olympic torch’s eternal flame with his super breath.

With Superman out of favor, the Websters’ oil scheme proceeds, with Gus tapped to reprogram the computers to stop pumping oil. Turns out Gus has his own plans, though, for a super computer that Webster agrees to build for him.

The now-evil Superman (you can tell he’s a baddie now because his costume is somehow darker and he needs a shave) is seduced by Lorelai into actually aiding the plan in exchange for what are strongly implied, as the scene fades to black, to be sexual favors!

As the oil problem causes chaos throughout the world, a drunken Superman is next seen in a tavern at mid-day, using his powers to destroy property. As it happens, Lana and Ricky (no idea what happened to Buster) stumble on the scene as he leaves the bar threateningly. With Ricky’s entreaties echoing in his head, he flies away to a junkyard where Clark Kent splits into a separate person somehow. Reeve’s acting in both roles is on point here but it’s a bit of a ridiculously long scene as the two versions of his character fight it out. I’d venture to say it’s meant to be metaphorical except the film makes it clear it’s actually happening.

In the end, the good version—Clark—wins and is up, up, and away!

Gus is with the Webster siblings and Lorelai as they prepare to balloon down into the Grand Canyon where Gus’s super computer has been somehow secretly and quickly built. When pressed for why he isn’t going down with them, but rather taking a burro, Gus gives perhaps the funniest line of the movie: “I just don’t believe a man can fly.”

Sadly, though, it’s a reminder that Superman’s flying scenes aren’t quite as flawless in this one, as evidenced when he flies into the canyon in the next scene. Missiles are fired at him and we see them tracked on the bad guys’ screen as if it were an early Atari game. Amusing, but silly. As is the fact that not only Gus but now Lorelai are showing sympathy toward Superman’s side.

It’s revealed that Vera, too, is a computer expert, so Gus is no longer needed. Of course, one wonders why Gus was needed in the first place if she had been capable of doing all the dirty work herself all along. She uses all sorts of tricks built into the computer, including a kryptonite ray. When Gus is informed that he will go down in history as the man who killed Superman, he ziplines down to the canyon floor and sabotages his own invention by cutting its power.

Some comic hijinks occur between Vaughn and Pryor before the computer springs back to life, stealing power from grids across the US. Gus manages to save Superman from the kryptonite but the computer attacks Gus. Lorelai escapes but the machine assimilates Vera, similar to the way the Borg does such things.

She becomes a living cyborg version of the computer itself and attacks the others. Superman dispatches with her relatively easily but the rest of the machine nearly gets him. Remembering those acid vials from earlier in the film—foreshadowing—he flies back and gets just one to defeat the somewhat sentient and evil machine. Several minutes of explosions follow, with Supes rescuing Gus and the two shaking hands before Superman flies him away, giving exposition as he does so. He says he guesses the machine “died of acid indigestion.”

Gus is dropped off for one last comic scene as Clark is shown visiting Lana and Ricky and ending up fighting with Brad. How and why is Brad there in Metropolis? Who knows? In yet another anticlimactic scene, a darkly tanned Lois returns from her assignment in the Caribbean only to find that Perry’s new secretary is Lana Lang!

Finally, Superman re-leans the Straight Tower of Pisa.

Then it’s off into space for that same grinning closure for the third film in a row.

It’s hard to deny that Superman III has its moments but the broad comedy, even in scenes without Richard Pryor, makes it a bit hard to take overall. Plot holes don’t help, nor does the absence of Lois. And what happened to the dog!!?? Clearly not up to the standards of I and II, but enjoyable for the most part in spite of itself. But some folks just don’t know when to leave well enough alone.

On to Superman IV.

SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE

Warner Bros. released Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987, five years after the third film. In between, came 1984’s Supergirl, from the same producers, but without a long-promised appearance by Superman.

Chris Reeve and a number of other cast members do return for Superman IV but most of the creative folks behind the scenes are different this time out. Not only are Donner and Lester missing but so are the Salkinds and Spengler! In fact, one of the first things one notices as the credits go by is that this is a Golan/Globus film for Cannon, best known as a lower budget exploitation production company. The new director is Canadian Sidney J. Furie, reportedly a replacement for a fired Wes Craven. Furie is not a bad director at all (The Ipcress File) but we may never know how his cut of a Superman film might have looked.

It seems Cannon was about to go under just as this picture was being shot and released. Not only did this necessitate budget cuts but supposedly 45 minutes of mostly plot scenes were cut in order to get in more showings per day in theaters and thus bring in more money. Much of the plot is still there in the comic book adaptation which was likely done from an early screenplay in order to get it out on time.

Then there’s the fact that Christopher Reeve, the actor who so perfectly embodied Superman and his ideals insisted he would only play the role again if it was made from his own story of nuclear disarmament. The actual screenplay was written this time out by award-winning screenwriter Lawrence Konner (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) and his sometime writing partner, Max Rosenthal. Konner is on record in several places at being quite unhappy with the way Cannon hampered his script and the resulting film.

But what about that film? We can’t review a version that doesn’t exist that MIGHT have been better, nor can we review any adaptations. Let’s take a look at the movie, itself. Spoilers all around, here…is Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

We open with a cute scene where Superman saves a cosmonaut accidentally knocked away from an orbiting space station by a satellite. He even speaks perfect Russian to him and flashes that million-dollar grin.

That’s the good part. The bad part is that we no longer believe a man can fly as it’s clearly shaky process shots and even includes what looks a bit like animation in the long-shots. Also, Reeve’s hair is dyed too black. I mean, it was dyed for all of the earlier films, too, but it never looked it.

Here it looks it.

That whole scene was just to get Superman in up front because next, Clark, sans glasses returns to the Smallville farm where he grew up, He immediately goes to the barn where his rocket was hidden and finds yet another glowing green crystal as the voice of his mother (Susannah York in what may have been leftover audio from Lester’s Superman II) tells him it can be used only once.

Foreshadowing.

Next, we cut to Gene Hackman, back as Lex Luthor, oddly with hair and a prominent bald spot in back, now working on a chain gang.

Suddenly an incredibly annoying Jon Cryer drives up loudly in a hopped-up car, seemingly unnoticed at first by the guards until they get in to see what it’s like. That’s when Cryer—who turns out to be Lex’s nephew, Leonard, locks them in and uses a remote-control device to send them over a cliff to their casual, flaming deaths. Well, apparently someone rethought that as we get a brief shot of them climbing back up, somewhat the worse for wear but still extant as Lex and nephew make their escape, vowing to destroy Superman.

Back in Metropolis, we revisit the Kent crossing the street gag from Superman II only this time he goes fast enough not to damage the cab. We then have Lois learning French—another callback to II—followed by her trapped in a runaway subway train until a quick save by Superman, who then stops to make a statement about how subways are a safe way to travel—a callback to Superman: Thr Movie.

Jackie Cooper survived this movie by more than 20 years but he’s looking thin and a tad unhealthy this time out as Perry White. Perry isn’t at all happy as he’s meeting with the new owner of The Daily Planet, played by Sam Wanamaker, and his gorgeous daughter, Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway) whose idea of a new direction for the great metropolitan newspaper is to turn it into a gossipy, exploitative tabloid with a nude on the front page.

There’s a funny line when the new boss notes, when going over the books, that there are no air travel expenses at all for Clark Kent.

Going on in the background during all this is a story of a world summit collapsing. A TV report shows a new US President announcing that the country is now second in the nuclear arms race. One boy suggests writing Superman to help settle the issue.

Meanwhile, Lex and his valley boy mini-me steal a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum by somehow simply clipping the supposedly unclippable hair from its display where it was holding a 1000-pound weight.

Lacy makes a blatant effort to seduce Clark, interrupted by Lois bringing in the kid’s letter for Superman, suggesting that only he could rid the world of all nukes. Sensing a chance for exploitation, Lacy turns it into a front-page story and her father brings the kid to town.

Superman is forced by public opinion into at least considering the boy’s proposal. At his fortress, the Kryptonian Elders (Not the same ones from Superman: The Movie and Superman: II) appear as floating heads to somehow counsel him on the issue.

In the ridiculous scene that follows, Clark once again reveals himself to Lois as Superman, this time walking off a rooftop while holding her hand, then switching to his fighting togs mid-fall but leaving his glasses on.

Then they fly off to yet another instrumental reprise of “Can You Read My Mind?” Some of the flying shots aren’t bad but none are anywhere near those in Superman: The Movie and Superman II. Just being a jerk, Superman drops Lois as they fly and laughs long and hearty before catching her. Funny.

When they get back, Lois tells him she remembers everything, but then he super-kisses her again (callback to Lester’s Superman II) and she forgets it all once more as he changes back to Clark.

Next day, Jimmy is photographing the Planet’s headline poster boy in Metropolis when Superman arrives to finally meet him. They walk to a building which is supposedly the United Nations but which looks nothing like it. To great applause all along the way, the Man of Steel just walks in and asks to take the podium. “Effective immediately, I’m going to rid our planet of all nuclear weapons.”

Over the next few minutes, he begins to do just that, ridding the world of 30 or so of its nuclear missiles by tying them up in a giant metal space bag and tossing them into the sun.

Lex takes advantage of all this to have his Super-DNA project attached to the next nuke and the Nuclear Man is created. It would have made sense to have him look just like Supes but Reeve had already fought himself in Superman III so a different actor was brought in, with poofy blond hair. He returns to see Lex, fully grown, wearing a costume, and somehow educated, speaking in Hackman’s voice.

Lois and Lacy don’t care for each other but agree to double date Clark and Superman. Lois seems to have upgraded to a million-dollar apartment since Superman: The Movie. Lois is interviewing Superman first about the missiles but he has to trick her to go be Clark downstairs for Lacy, then vice versa again. Silly stuff right in the middle of what had turned out to be a serious story.

Sigh…Yet another callback to Superman: The Movie as Lex contacts Superman in a way only he can hear.

After a brief confrontation, Nuclear Man shows up and their follows a really long series of flight and fight scenes, the centerpiece of the picture. Among other things, ol’ Nuke steals the Statue of Liberty from Metropolis Harbor and Supes has to put it back. Then he seemingly succumbs to…something.

Lacy is made publisher as the Planet headline screams “Superman Dead?” Her father tells Lacy to fire Clark and Lois quits. She rushes to Clark’s apartment and finds him claiming to be recovering from the flu. We can’t tell if Lois knows or doesn’t know at this point. Clark looks fine until she leaves but then has white hair for some reason. He digs out the green crystal. See? I told you! His mom basically gives him the speech that Pop gave him in Donner’s about this being the last of Krypton’s energy.

Randomly, Nuclear Man spots Lacy’s photo on the latest Planet cover announcing her new position and he’s filled with…something…and flies off to find her. “Where is the woman?” he asks Superman when he shows up at the Planet door as if he’d never been gone. “If you will not tell me, I will hurt people.” In the umpteenth callback, this time to both versions of Superman II, Nuke starts destroying the city street and people run in panic. Rather than help, Superman yells for him to stop. After another round of explosions and destruction, Superman agrees to take his enemy to the girl.

Since the Nuclear Man’s power depends on the sun, our hero traps him in a dark elevator long enough to drag him into space and trap him, supposedly, on the dark side of the moon. Sunlight arrives though, and he wakes up for yet another surprisingly noisy fight on the atmosphere-less moon.

The villain is back at The Daily Planet by the time Superman wakes up from the battle and pauses from the chase to right the US flag (another Superman II callback). Nuclear Man is flying the object of his Frankenstein-ian lusts into space (How is Lacy breathing?) when the Man of Might literally creates an eclipse by pushing the moon in front of the sun.

After all, not like that’s going to create any kind of atmospheric upheavals or anything, is it?

Lacy is safely returned planet-side and the still powerless monster villain is retrieved and dropped into a tower at a nuclear plant. How that didn’t simply re-power him, we aren’t told. His story ends there.

The rest of the story is that Perry White convinced the banks to buy back The Daily Planet from Warfield, leaving him only a minority stockholder.

Superman arrives for a press conference where he talks about how he had made a mistake after all in attempting to get rid of the nuclear weapons. I wonder how the boy who started it all feels. He was already bullied. Being blamed now for Superman’s folly couldn’t have helped.

Lex is rounded up and dropped off back at the chain gang. Lenny is taken to Boys Town.

And in the end, Superman flies into space in that same footage used in all of the pictures, turns and flashes Reeve’s million-dollar grin one last time.

Is Superman IV a good movie? Not by the standards of this series. It definitely has its moments, most of them due, as before, to Chris’s perfect casting. But even Reeve looks a bit thinner this time out and Lois seems a bit worse for wear, too. Lacy seems an interesting character but much of her actual plot scenes are missing. Hackman had been overused by that point, Cryer was terrible in this, and Nuclear Man was a big, burly nothing. Finally, the callbacks were overdone.

All in all, it’s good that this was the last of the original series.

EXTRAS

The package is packed with extras including audio commentaries for each film; vintage featurettes; deleted scenes; trailers, tv spots & teaser trailers; tv specials, Richard Donner introduction to Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut; vintage animated shorts; and eight Fleischer Famous Studios vintage animated shorts.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So, do the Christopher Reeve Superman movies hold up four decades later?

I would have to say not really. It’s not just that we’ve come to expect more sophistication from our superhero movies. It’s that there are glaring plot holes, super powers seemingly made up on the spot, missed opportunities (Why wasn’t the evil Superman double in Superman III Bizarro? Or the sentient computer in Superman III Brainiac?), screwy continuity both within and between the movies, at times a ridiculous level of campiness (mainly in Superman: The Movie and Superman III), way too much Luthor (and any Lenny is too much!) and copycat scenes.

So, no. The Superman films don’t hold up as movies.

BUT…

As pure entertainment, they remain a joy.

Leaving out the nostalgia factor entirely, I had a ball rewatching all four (technically five with the fabled Donner cut). They’re colorful and, for the most part, fast-moving and filled with still mostly impressive special effects and stunt work. All three of the directors of the five films have their moments. Only Donner seemed to have a genuine understanding of the Man of Steel and what made him a super man even if at times he seemed to lose it.

Mainly, though, what still holds up is the casting.

We meet Clark and Lois and Jimmy and all the rest and we believe they are who they’re playing. I remember at the time being very much against the announced casting of Margot Kidder. Anne Archer’s name had been thrown around and I thought she should have gotten the role. And yet Kidder is perfect. Kidder IS Lois. So much so that when she’s missing for 99% of Superman III, that absence is felt.

Jackie Cooper and Marc McClure became Perry White and Jimmy Olsen. Cooper was so well-known to all of us back then and yet his blustering and bellowing as the Chief makes us think of him only as Perry. Marc was in commercials before Superman but his eager beaver approach makes him the definitive Jimmy Olsen.

Hackman and Brando. And Glenn Ford, for that matter. Stunt casting, sure. It’s been said their big names were needed in order to secure the financing. But they work. Brando is stunning, riveting as Jor-El (even if he mispronounced the name of his own planet…twice!). Ford is earnest and sets the tone for the whole series. And Hackman…well, he stayed around too long in the series and chewed too much of the expensive scenery but even that was fun to watch.

Was there ever a movie villain as imperious as Terence Stamp’s scary General Zod?

The decision to make Superman III a Richard Pryor movie still mystifies, but Richard is still so very charismatic and fun to watch in spite of everything.

But…and you knew where this was going, didn’t you?… in the end, what makes every one of these films hold up is Superman himself.

This series is the only one where we really see the idealized Superman of the comic books. The late Christopher Reeve not only looked the part physically but he seemed to innately get the fact that a hero, super or not, did the right thing for the simple reason that it WAS the right thing. The small-town values instilled in him by the Kents were the motivation both for Clark and for Reeve.

Christopher Reeve’s story is ultimately a tragic one, of course, and to be honest, he was never absolutely great shakes as an actor, but here, in his prime, in every single scene he’s in, he nails it. Every time he appears onscreen in costume, I was filled with hope and excitement, just like the characters in the films. And there’s a reason they went out on that same exact space shot with his amazing grin at the end of every one of the pictures. It’s the promise that all is well, and all will BE well. I still got that.

After all these years, and a hundred other superhero movies, I still got that. Not from Cap nor from Iron Man. Not from Wonder Woman or Cavill’s Superman, and certainly not from the later Batman films.

But after rewatching all of these Superman movies, as messy as they are to my now oh-so-jaded consciousness, I would recommend them in a second to anyone who hasn’t seen them and particularly to those who already have, but could use a reminder of what makes a superhero super.

Up, up, and away!

Booksteve recommends enthusiastically!